


sometimes to love someone, you gotta be a stranger

by agetwellcard



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Pining, Pre-War, Slow Burn, Soulmates, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-28 07:07:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19389022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agetwellcard/pseuds/agetwellcard
Summary: He’s known it since he was a kid, when his mother used to whisper about when she met Bucky’s father. When soulmates shake each other’s hands for the first time, they see their future together. Winnifred Barnes saw a baby in her soulmate’s arms. In 1940, when Steve Rogers shakes Bucky Barnes’ hand, all he sees is death.“I saw – There were fireworks. I think it might’ve been my birthday. We were sharing a blanket, and kissing, and we were surrounded by our friends…and – fuck, I don’t know – we were happy.”Bucky swallows thickly. He wishes he could’ve saw that.“You saw that too, didn’t you?” Steve asks then, voice unsteady. Bucky says nothing. “What…what did you see, Bucky?”He crosses his arms over his chest and wishes harder that he had seen what Steve saw. He wishes there had been fireworks and kisses instead of knives and the glint of a metal arm around Steve’s neck.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ohhhh boy.
> 
> okay, i've been working on this for like SO LONG. i finally got the motivation to finish this a few days ago and i have it all written now! so yay no more unfinished works for me! i'll probably post once a day, but who knows i might do it quicker than that. feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think :") the title is taken from a line in blade runner. 
> 
> also, if you're interested, my tumblr is [ agetwellcard ](https://agetwellcard.tumblr.com). feel free to follow and let me know what you think there if you want! 
> 
> oh and i might eventually make a playlist for this fic because there are some songs i listened to on repeat while writing this.

In 1943, Bucky wakes up cradling his left arm the night before he leaves for war.

He’s sweating and panting, the whole room spinning as he tries to orient himself. His dream is still vivid, and he has trouble shaking it. Most days, he can’t even remember what he dreamt about the night before. When he has this dream, though, he always remembers every detail painfully.

He swallows thickly and looks down to his arm. It’s still his own arm. Instead of the glint of metal and the uneven heaviness on his left side, he has skin and bone and a hand to shake with.

He wonders how much longer that will be true.

***

Bucky knew about Steve Rogers. Practically everyone on their side of Brooklyn knew about Steve. If it wasn’t because he was sick or almost dead of some illness, it was because Steve Rogers had an affinity for getting himself beat up.

Usually, Bucky stayed out of it. He lived a few buildings over from Steve’s, and would often catch sight of the thin, gangly kid stemming a bloody nose with his sleeve or wearing another shiner against his pale skin. It wasn’t Bucky’s problem, though. He always felt bad, but he had too much of a mess in his own life to deal with Steve’s mess too.

So, he stayed away, despite the curiosity and pity that Bucky tried to keep in the back of his mind.

Tonight’s different, though.

Bucky is walking home from work, his hands deep in his pockets as he tries not to think about how much he needs a new jacket. It’s getting colder, and the snow is only a few good weeks away. He’s thinking about the warm quiet that the snow brings when it’s disrupted by the sound of someone yelling.

It’s not exactly that unusual. He lives in a shitty neighborhood. If Bucky was smart, he’d walk a little quicker and make it home to help with dinner. He usually would, too, it’s just that he knows that voice. Without even seeing his face, Bucky knows that the voice belongs to Steve Rogers. Bucky shouldn’t care, and should mind his own business, but it sounds bad.

Cursing himself, Bucky creeps slowly towards the alleyway he hears the yelling coming from. From the sounds of it, Steve is egging them on, which makes Bucky kind of want to punch the kid himself. He’s too small to start fights he can’t finish.

From around the corner, Bucky can finally see the fight. It’s two against Steve, but they barely look like they’re trying. Steve is bent forward, one arm braced against the brick of the building. He has blood running down his face, but Bucky can’t make out where it came from. He does see the way that one of the stockier men lay a punch right to Steve’s face, knocking him down to the concrete.

Bucky purses his lips and looks up to the sky for a few annoyed seconds before stepping out from the shadows.

“Hey, assholes,” he shouts, one arm on his hip. The three of them turn towards him, Steve still wheezing on the ground. “Leave him alone. It’s not really a fair match.”

One of them snorts. “Two against two sounds like a fair match to me.”

“Jesus christ,” Bucky mutters under his breath. He starts to walk closer when he says, “Fair enough, I suppose.”

The bigger of the two tries to throw a punch at Bucky, but he deflects it. Instead, he swoops down and tackles the man to the ground, laying two good punches on him before his friend is dragging Bucky up by his collar. He knees Bucky in the gut and then knocks him against the wall when Bucky is reeling from the pain. It’s not enough to keep him from hitting the ground, though, and he’s quick to try to punch the second man but it never connects.

The second time he tries though, in a flurry of limbs, he hits him square in the jaw, and Bucky can feel the pain crackle in his fist. Before he even has time to recover, Steve protectively stands in front of Bucky, now holding a brick in his grip.

The guys stare at the two of them, exchange a look, and then hurl some threats and insults at the Steve and Bucky as they walk away. Once they are out of sight, Bucky hunches over and takes a look at his fist. It’s busted and bloody, but it still feels better than the shoulder that connected with the brick wall and his gut.

“Are you okay?” Bucky asks Steve.

The fight is over, but Steve still looks like he’s ready to throw a punch. He drops the brick, but the hard look on his face doesn’t drop. “Don’t expect me to say thank you,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Guess I shouldn’t even have expected it from you.”

Steve scoffs. “You don’t even know me.”

“You kind of have a reputation.”

“You don’t know me,” Steve repeats, dropping his shoulders. He starts to head away, but Bucky stops him.

“Okay, let me introduce myself,” he says. “I’m Bucky.”

Then, Bucky sticks his hand out to the kid, some blood still warm on his knuckles. Steve stares at it for a few too many seconds long with a sick look on his face. It isn’t like it is that unusual. Men shake hands with men, and women shake hands with women, and there is never anything weird about it. There isn’t any of the fear and anticipation like when a man and a woman shake hands. Not that Bucky ever fears shaking a dame’s hand.

Bucky grew up in a family of shakers. He has never been scared to stick out his hand and smile coyly at whichever dame it was this time. He’ll hold out his hand and say something cheesy like, “Do you want to know what kind of dress you’ll wear to our wedding?”

He’s shaken so many hands that he doesn’t even bother pretending like this one will be the one. It used to feel like a game, but to Bucky, he’s not so sure he has a soulmate anymore. Not for a while, at least.

So, when Bucky puts out his hand, there’s no pretense to it. He’s simply introducing himself to the unruly and infamous Steve Rogers. Yet, Steve is weary to reciprocate. He frowns as his light blue eyes flick from Bucky’s hand to his face. He looks away for a few seconds before finally slapping his hand into Bucky’s. When he does, though, the two of them gasp.

When people have told Bucky about when they’ve met their soulmate and shook their hand for the first time, he never imagined _this_. He always imagined it was more like going and a seeing a picture. He thought it would be like sitting down and the projector to starting up to play his future.

It’s not like that at all.

Instead, Bucky is there. It feels like a dream. One second he’s in a Brooklyn back-alley and the next he’s somewhere he doesn’t recognize.

***

When Bucky was a little kid, him and Rebecca used to sit next to his mother on the couch and she’d tell them about how she met their father. The two of them would unfold her right hand and trace the wrinkles on her skin, wondering how it felt to shake the hands of their soulmate.

She told them the story a thousand times, but it never got old. She’d always look to Bucky and smile fondly and whisper, “It was the day you were born.”

Rebecca hated this part. She’d always whine and complain that it should’ve been her birth. To this, his mother would always smile wider and say, “I knew even then that you were on the way.” It was enough for Rebecca to keep quiet as his mother told the rest of the story. Her memory was only a few seconds long, which was considerably shorter than most. It was only of Bucky’s father sitting beside her hospital bed with Bucky in his arms. The two of them smiled at each other, and that was the whole memory. It was enough, though, for her and his father to get married.

Bucky used to think it was romantic. He used to spend whole afternoons thinking about the girl he’d shake hands with and see their future together. He’d wonder about the color of her eyes and the way the future would look.

Before Bucky’s eighteenth birthday, though, after he had gone to bed with a dame who didn’t believe in the shake, he had started to realize maybe he didn’t either. He wanted to think it was because of all the altruistic reasons that she had, but that wasn’t true.

Bucky pretended all the way up until he had to leave for basic. He shook hands with dames and went on dates and told his mother he was waiting for his soulmate, but it wasn’t true anymore. One night, he stared into his hands and knew they held no future with white weddings and babies in his arms. He felt defective. If only had known then how true that was.

***

Bucky had run.

After he saw his future with Steve, there was no way he could stay.

Steve steps back in shock, his mouth parted and eyes wide, but he doesn’t seem upset. Instead, after a few seconds, a smile blooms on his face. There’s still blood running down his face and he looks sort of feral, Bucky thinks, but he smiles even wider when he looks up to Bucky.

Before either of them can even say something, Bucky runs away. He runs and runs until he can’t bear it anymore and keels over in the middle of the road. He couldn’t stay there with Steve. Not after what he saw. Not after what he was going to do to him.

Bucky looks down to his hands. They still look the same as before. He folds his left hand into a fist and feels sick. After throwing up in the gutter, Bucky trudges home, his legs and lungs aching.

He hears his family before he unlocks the door. The girls are running around the living room with dolls and his mother is setting the table for dinner. His father is sitting on the couch, blank expression as he stares into the wall. Bucky stands aimlessly at the door until his mother realizes he’s there.

“James,” she says. “Come here and stir this.”

He walks over stiffly does as he’s told.

He can feel his mother’s eyes on him. He’s already rubbed the blood off his fist. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

His mother stares at his face and frowns. “Are you sure?” She steps closer and puts a hand to the skin of his forehead. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Bucky tries to smile. “No such thing as ghosts, Ma.”

***

Avoiding Steve feels wrong. He can’t get the feeling like he’s doing something horrible out of his head as he hides behind buildings and walks faster when he hears Steve calling out his name that Bucky never told him. He doesn’t want to know how he figured it out.

Admittedly, avoiding Steve is easier than Bucky thought it would be. That is, until Steve corners him one night after Bucky finishes his shift at the docks, only to find Steve Rogers approaching him with a hard look on his face. Bucky is joking around with the guys when he catches the skinny blond making his way through the crowd.

Bucky freezes when he sees him, but can numbly register a few taunts being thrown Steve’s way. He stops a few feet from Bucky and all of his friends grow quiet as they wait for Steve to say something. For a second, Bucky can’t help but to take him in. Whether he wanted it or not, Bucky’s been haunted with dreams about his face. Sometimes it’s just another iteration of what he saw when they shook that wakes Bucky up with a wet face and a desire to throw up until he can’t remember it anymore. Other times, though, it’s much worse, somehow. He dreams of Steve and him going to see a picture together or the two of them sitting at a diner laughing. Sometimes, he’ll even wake up late at night hard and wanting with remnants of a disconnected dream full of Steve’s skin and his voice in his ear.

It horrifies him. He’s only met the guy once. He’s seen him more in his dreams than his waking life. It doesn’t make any sense to Bucky, but it’s something that seems to only make Bucky even angrier to see him in real life.

“I need to talk to you.”

It’s probably the kindest thing he could’ve said, but Bucky still feels furious at him. His face is growing red, and all the guys around him are not even trying to stifle their laughter.

“Fuck off,” Bucky tells him. He’s grateful that his voice doesn’t catch in his throat.

This only makes Steve puts his scrawny arms over his chest and give Bucky an angry look. “Come and talk to me,” Steve says. He cocks his head when he says, “Or I could just do it here.”

Bucky swallows thickly.

“Find out what your girlfriend wants, Barnes,” one of the guys says, setting the group into a flurry of laughter.

Steve seems unaffected by it. Bucky grabs Steve by his arm and drags him away from the group until they’re safely at a distance where they can’t hear how angry Bucky is when he hisses, “I swear to god if you ever come find me like this again I’ll – “

Bucky is surprised when Steve actually tries to push him, his palms against Bucky’s chest. He really only stumbles with shock until he straightens himself back up.

“You can’t just run from this kind of stuff, okay? That’s not how it works,” he yells, but then grows quiet he adds, “We’re soulmates.”

“We’re not _anything_ ,” Bucky calmly tells him, seething with anger. “If you think that I’m going to go play house with you because you thought we had a moment, you’re wrong.”

“I know you saw it. I don’t understand it, either, but we can – “

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hisses. “It was nothing. I don’t want to see you again, okay? Leave me alone.”

Steve stares at him, all of the anger from before dissolved away into just sadness now. And, fuck, now he looks like he’s going to _cry_. Bucky wants to apologize and say that he wishes that they had never met, but he forces himself not to. Instead, he gives him one last look and walks away.

They avoid each other for years, and Bucky tries his hardest to ignore the ache in his chest at night.

***

It’s only when they’re in the middle of the war, on a whole other continent, that they find their way back to each other.

When Bucky first gets his draft letter, the first thing he thinks of is Steve. It’s the easiest solution to the whole mess. He resigns himself to leaving the country, going to war, and probably not making it back.

When Bucky was younger, he would lament to his mother that he would never find his soulmate, that there were too many people in the world. He remembers the way she would brush his hair aside and say, “The universe always finds a way to bring soulmates together.”

He never understood it, or at least not until Steve Rogers shows up in Italy.

Bucky wishes it could have been anyone but Steve that saves his life.

When Bucky first sees Steve, really sees him, he turns over and vomits. He’s just as he had looked in the future Bucky had saw when they shook hands. Instead of his skinny body from before, it’s been replaced by muscles. It just feels like another piece sliding into place, and Bucky doesn’t even want to look at him, let alone register the feeling of Steve’s hands on either of his shoulders on a metal examination table. 

It was easy to pass it off as what they did to him, but Bucky can barely even look at Steve, his future feeling more and more eminent now.

He had tried so hard to outrun it. He didn’t mind throwing himself in front of the guards when they tried to take Dugan. He didn’t care if they took him, or what they did to him, just as long as he didn’t come back like all the others taken before him.

And yet, Steve somehow found him in hell.

When Bucky’s conscious enough to realize what’s happened, he can’t stop looking at his arm. He was certain he was going to wake up with the flesh replaced with metal. As the guards dragged him away from the others, he had hugged his arm close to him, hoping maybe he could undo his whole history in one action.

It hadn’t happened, though. He had touched it all over, scared he was only seeing what he wanted to see, but it was still all there, and it still oozed blood when Bucky cut a small line into his forearm later that night when everyone had been asleep. It healed itself up in only a few hours, though, the tracks of Bucky’s evidence long gone before he even realized it.

Now, Bucky sits at the bar and tries fruitlessly to get drunk. He’s got money to spend and nowhere else to spend it, so he buys drink after drink, despite the increasingly curious looks of the bartender. He achingly remembers the blissful warmness of being drunk. He can’t get drunk, though, not anymore. He only drinks and drinks and remembers everything.

If he wasn’t miserable enough, Steve somehow finds a way to make it worse. He walks into the bar and directly up to Bucky, a shy smile on his face as he sits on the barstool next to him.

“How are you feeling?” Steve asks quietly.

Bucky stares into the amber color of his drink and says nothing. It’s probably enough of an answer.

He can feel Steve’s eyes on him for a few seconds longer before they’re gone. Steve orders a drink and takes a long sip of it before he turns back to Bucky. “Are you going home?”

Bucky actually looks up to him now, anger sizzling through him. “The hell, Rogers. I’m not fucking dead.”

“It’s just – you can, if you wanted. You could go back to Brooklyn. If that’s where you’d rather be,” he says quickly, words jumbled together like he can’t get it out fast enough. He’s never seen Steve like this. It’s a far cry from the overly-confident skinny kid in Brooklyn alleys.

“Jesus christ.” Bucky takes another sip from his glass. All acidity, no warmth.

“If,” Steve starts, and then sighs. He tries again. “ _If_ you wanted to stay, I’m putting together a team of sorts. I’d be happy to have you.”

“How generous of you,” Bucky notes sarcastically. “You barely know me. Tell me, why is it that you want me on your team?”

Steve frowns. “I don’t need to know you to know your reputation around here. Everyone knows you’re a good solider.”

“ _Good soldier_ ,” Bucky repeats with a bitter laugh. He decides not to even get into that. “This isn’t anything about what happened with us? Tell me that this isn’t your way of watching over me so that you can be there to save me again.”

“That’s not it,” Steve says quickly, but Bucky sees right through the lie.

“Bullshit.”

Steve sighs and looks down to his drink. He stirs it around and then mournfully goes, “Would it be such a bad thing if it was because of what happened?”

“I don’t need your protection. I could’ve died on that table, and I would’ve been fine with it.”

When Steve looks up, his whole face is stricken with pain. “I don’t know what I ever did to you.”

Even if he doesn’t want to admit it, Bucky’s always felt guilty about it. He’s only ever heard a few stories of soulmates abandoning each other. Usually they’re already married to someone else when they meet their soulmate, or they don’t believe in it. Never like this. Bucky’s never heard of someone who’s tried so hard to run from their soulmate because they were _scared_ of their future.

He has to remind himself that there’s a reason for why he’s been running.

“You didn’t do anything,” Bucky admits quietly. He didn’t. It’s always been Bucky, it’s always been what Bucky is going to do one day.

“Then why did you walk away?” Steve asks. His voice gets even quieter when he asks, “Why don’t you want me?”

Bucky gestures between the two of them. “ _This_ ,” he says. “It’s not right.”

It’s not unheard of, though, especially in their neighborhood. Even Bucky has heard people whispering about same-sex couples who found their soulmates through the shake. No one actually thinks it’s legitimate. When Bucky was first starting to think he’d never find a soulmate, a part of him had dreamt about the one and a million chance of his and Steve’s hand shake. Now, he wishes he could go back and daydream about a life where he never met anyone.

“How can you say that? After what we saw? How can you say that it wasn’t right? Bucky,” he says, moving closer. “Didn’t you see how happy we were?”

Bucky tries to breathe but something is tight in his chest and he can’t help it when he asks, “What did you see?” He’s been desperately imaging what it was that Steve saw for years. He’s always wondered what it could be that kept him wanting Bucky.

“What do you mean?” Steve asks. “We saw the same thing, didn’t we?”

Bucky grimly shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

“I saw – There were fireworks. I think it might’ve been my birthday. We were sharing a blanket, and kissing, and we were surrounded by our friends…and – fuck, I don’t know – we were _happy_.”

Bucky swallows thickly. He wishes he could’ve saw that.

“You saw that too, didn’t you?” Steve asks then, voice unsteady. Bucky says nothing. “What…what did you see, Bucky?”

He crosses his arms over his chest and wishes harder that he had seen what Steve saw. He wishes there had been fireworks and kisses instead of knives and the glint of a metal arm around Steve’s neck. He wishes –

“I have to go,” Bucky says hurriedly, already stumbling out of his seat when Steve grabs his arm.

“Bucky, _wait_.”

Bucky jerks away from the touch. “Look, I’ll join your team but _this_ is never going to happen. If you can’t deal with that then send me back to fucking Italy.”

He leaves Steve at the bar, and spends the rest of the night trying to forget the feeling of Steve’s hand on his arm.

He dreams of fireworks that turn into gunshots.


	2. Chapter 2

Unsurprisingly, Bucky gets orders the next day to join Steve’s team of misfits. Things go from there.

Despite Bucky’s best efforts to remain strangers, Steve and Bucky do get to know each other slowly. It’s hard not to, though. Sometimes they have hours to kill and nothing to do but to talk amongst themselves. The commandos sit in cold fields and abandoned buildings and talk about their lives before the war. Secrets that they don’t want to die without every admitting come out after a few gunshots and the steady sounds of bombs going off in the distance. Bucky keeps his to himself, though, and instead listens the team talk for hours as he smokes cigarettes he should be saving and ignoring the wistful looks Steve gives him.

Other times, there is no time for talking for hours. Bucky thinks, stupidly, that these are the times when he gets to know Steve the best. When survival feels slightly out of reach for hours, Bucky constantly feels Steve over his shoulder. He feels the weight of Steve’s thinly veiled love and almost forgets that he’s supposed to be rejecting it.

He won’t admit it, but Bucky’s still rattled by what happened to him, and sometimes even a flash of a Hydra agent’s uniform will make him sick to his stomach with the desire to hide. His shots are still steady, but he’s not as careful as he once was. Steve is always there, though, at the last minute. In the beginning, it irritated the shit out of Bucky, but eventually he relents, but only because Steve will do it for any of the guys.

Steve and Bucky fight well together, too. When they’re side by side, it’s almost like they’ve been busting Hydra facilities all their lives. It’s almost like a dance that the two do with each other, always managing to predicate the other’s moves before they do them. It doesn’t make sense, or at least Bucky doesn’t want to think it does, but it’s saved their lives too many times to count.

At the same time, Bucky gets flashes of what he saw when they shook hands. He holds his gun more tightly, barrel pointed away from Steve for now.

They find an abandoned barn one day and for a few hours they barely utter a word. Instead, they set up their makeshift beds for the nights in close proximity and hang around for hours without sleeping. It’s Gabe who finally breaks the silence, sighing loudly before saying, “I thought I wasn’t going to make it out of there today.”

Bucky has a knife in his hand that he never put away once they got inside. He flicks it open and stares at the blade and says nothing.

“I have my soulmate waiting for me,” he says then. “Back home. She’s…waiting and some days I’m not sure I’ll come home.”

“You will,” Steve says firmly.

Bucky tries not to groan.

“I’ve heard about what happens to people who lose their soulmates,” Gabe says then. “I don’t want for anything to happen to her.”

Bucky swallows thickly and run his thumb over the top of the blade.

“ _C’est pas vrai_ ,” Dernier murmurs with a roll of his eyes.

“ _Connerie_ ,” Gabe shoots back. “I had an aunt who lost her soulmate and she was never the same. Lost her mind, _complètement folle_.”

Bucky is still running his thumb over the blade when he pushes down too hard and cuts himself. A clean slice straight down the middle of the pad of his finger.

Bucky wonders, _what happens if you kill your soulmate?_

His cut bleeds but he knows it’ll heal overnight, all traces of it gone by the morning light.

***

Steve is shot.

They’re at an abandoned school for two hours digging the bullet out of his shoulder, all four of them cursing at each other as they try to stay calm and not kill him. Steve pretends like he isn’t in pain, and that it’s not a big deal, but Bucky knows it’s an act.

After, though, Bucky paces the room for at least twenty minutes. They can’t leave, but they can’t stay either, and one of their men was almost taken out with none of them even realizing until there was blood all over his palms.

Worst of all, Bucky’s angry at Steve. He should be the last person of all them to be shot. He should be able to protect himself. He shouldn’t be making Bucky worry about him like this. He shouldn’t be making Bucky realize what he’s been trying so hard to forget.

He cares about Steve. For weeks now, he’s been trying to ignore the pull they have towards each other, even fight it off if he has to. He’s heard about how it goes once you meet your soulmate, but he never imagined the feelings would get so intense and be so hard to push away. Then again, he never thought he would have to push them away.

Bucky is startled when Steve places a hand on his shoulder. Bucky’s still pacing, but he freezes when a firm hand lands on his shoulder. He realizes that Steve is standing right next to him, all bandaged up and tired looking.

“Stop worrying,” Steve says to him. “Everything’s fine.”

Bucky feels a little like he’s suffocating then. It’s not true. Everything _isn’t_ fine. They’re in enemy territory with their leader wounded in a goddamn shit show of a war. Everything isn’t fine because Bucky doesn’t know how to deal with his burgeoning feelings for Steve or the fact that he’s probably most likely going to kill Steve one day if what he saw when they shook hands was true.

He rubs at his face and tries to breathe, but he knows he’s not taking in enough air. Beside him, Steve crowds a little closer, and Bucky can feel his worried eyes on him. “Buck, are you okay?”

He’s not, but he tries to open his mouth and assure him that he is, and that it’s just been a long day. He can’t get the words out, and instead Steve’s caring eyes only seem to push him over the edge. He’s always hated crying, but it’s only exasperated with Steve’s presence looming over him, practically waiting for the tears to fall so he can be there for Bucky like a good soulmate is supposed to be.

He’s spent years strategically pushing away Steve’s touch, but all his resolve wilts away when Steve wraps his arms around him. He knows he should push him away. He should leave the room and join the others outside. He should smoke a cigarette and try to joke around in broken French with Dernier. He shouldn’t let this happen, but he’s exhausted. He sick of fighting everything all the time. He’ll give himself this one thing, just this once, and never again.

Steve lets Bucky burrow his head into his chest and cry. He’s fine, Bucky knows that, but he can’t help but to hold him tighter, hoping maybe to keep him safer for just a little longer. The rushing relief of knowing Steve is okay is making Bucky light-headed.

He never realized just how good it would feel to embrace Steve so simply like this. Although he refused to imagine Steve’s touch in his waking life, he had no control of himself when he slept. When he wasn’t having nightmares of a different kind of embrace, one cold and calculated, he had hazy dreams full of what he imagined Steve’s touches to be like. None of them could have prepared him for the completeness he feels right next to him.

In a moment of absurdity, Bucky thinks, if he was allowed, he’d stay the way they were for hours. He’d forget about the bombs, and the shootings, and the Nazis, and stay in this room for a little longer.

When he’s calmed down enough to stop crying, the pain somehow soothed in Steve’s arms, he pulls back a little to look at Steve’s face. He’s calm, and not like someone who almost died a few hours ago. Bucky realizes that maybe it’s wrong to give Steve this when Bucky will never be able to give him everything Steve wants. He thinks maybe Steve would have rather gotten a little part of it, though, than nothing at all.

He tries to tell himself that it’s true when he leans in and kisses Steve.

It’s not much of anything, just skin to skin, so quick that it almost feels like it didn’t even happen. It shouldn’t make the dull throb in Bucky’s chest nearly triple when he pulls apart. His chest has been full of sparks since Steve and Bucky reunited, but this touch starts the fire. And for a few moments, as he looks to Steve with his wide blue eyes and parted lips, he’s so warm.

It’s too easy to fall back into each other. Steve makes a quiet noise when their lips touch again, and Bucky only moves closer. His hand finds Steve’s face, smoothing over the rough stubble.

He can’t stay, though. He pulls away then, murmuring an apology that feels like throwing cold water all over the flames. When he tries to turn away, too scared to even look at Steve’s face, Steve’s hand shoots out to grab ahold of Bucky’s forearm.

The touch feels like a fire scorching his skin, even through his jacket, and Bucky is so shocked that he yanks his arm away, only to hold it close to his chest. Steve is staring at him, eyes wide and mouth open. He seems more surprised by the touch than Bucky, hand still extended slightly. Bucky stares at it, the same hand that made this whole mess in the first place.

“Bucky,” he says, like he’s begging, like he might get down on his knees.

Bucky swallows thickly. “I’m sorry, really.”

***

It’s awkward for a few days. Bucky finds himself drifting off with thoughts of what it felt like with Steve’s lips against his own. It seems like a hazy dream. Routine takes over, though. Kill, try to forget, do it again. It’s been on a loop since Bucky got out of basic. It feels like clockwork when he holds up a gun, or when he’s picking dried blood from his fingers a few hours later.

The kiss feels years later by the time the two of them even manage to get into close quarters where they aren’t being shot at. They go back to London for a few days, and Bucky is grateful for the break. When he finds a bathroom that has a lock on the door, he leans against the wall and tries to think straight.

He feels haunted by Steve’s touch. He somehow spent years avoiding him. He had only touched his hand once, and his life spiraled. Now, Steve’s kissed him and he can’t even get it out of his head. The longing that had only once been an afterthought he could tuck in the back of his head for years now burns wildly. When Steve passes by him, he desperately wants to reach forward and put a hand on his arm, or pull him in for a hug, or kiss him again until they melt into each other.

He’s kept his distance, though. He’s been good. He can do this. He’s fine.

As he wanders through the halls in what he hopes is the direction to his room, he thinks of not having to sleep in the dirt for a night. Bucky is sharing a room with Dernier and Gabe, so he’ll still have to listen to their snoring. He doesn’t mind, though, not really.

He’s dragging his hand on the wall as he walks, making a face at the uniformed soldiers that pass by him with curious looks on their faces. He is barely paying attention when Steve rounds the corner and runs into him. Bucky stumbles into his chest, and it’s only Steve’s hands that keep him upright.

“Shit,” Bucky says, quickly moving back from Steve’s touch. He hates how even out of his grip, Bucky can still feel Steve’s hands on him. One on his shoulder and the other on his waist.

“Sorry, Buck,” Steve says. “I didn’t see you.”

Something about the nickname hits Bucky almost as hard as the burning of Steve’s touch. “It’s okay.”

They two of them look at each other and say nothing for a few moments. Bucky wonders if Steve can feel it, too. He thinks that he can.

It’s dumb, and reckless, and everything Bucky’s been fighting against for years, but he can’t help it when he leans forward to kiss Steve. It’s never felt so good to give in.

He pushes Steve back against the wall and holds the side of his face as he kisses him. Steve gives it right back to him. When Steve pushes his tongue into Bucky’s mouth, he feels weak at the knees. He’s went to bed with only a few dames, but he’s never felt quite so undone by a little necking. It only grows worse when Steve presses his knee between Bucky’s legs. Bucky breaks the kiss to make a breathy noise in Steve’s neck.

Bucky’s about to lean back in to taste Steve’s mouth again, but before he can, he’s being roughly pushed away. He catches himself on the wall across from Steve. He’s shocked by their separation, and his chest is heavy with it. He thinks maybe he had it coming, after what he did to Steve the first time they kissed, but this seems cruel.

It’s only once three men round the corner that Steve had come from that Bucky understands. He leans against the wall and tries to breathe normally. He eyes Steve across from him. His face is red and blotchy, and he’s carefully watching the men as they walk by, clueless to what had been happening.

Once they’ve walked past, Steve stares at Bucky. He’s questioning him, Bucky realizes.

“Where is your room?” Bucky asks.

It’s right down the hall. He’s alone, of course. The place is nearly twice the size of Bucky’s room. He seems sheepish at first, standing by the locked door like he doesn’t quite know what to do next. Bucky wonders then if he’s ever made time with a dame, or anyone for that matter.

“Jesus, come here.” Bucky roughly pulls Steve towards him, hands on the lapels of his jacket.

Bucky’s surprised when he feels the edge of the bed on his thighs, but he only twists so that it’s Steve who gracefully falls into it. Bucky sits on top of Steve’s lap, straddling his thighs. He finds his lips again, the two of them making out heatedly as Bucky works on getting Steve out of his uniform.

It’s only once he’s gotten his jacket off and his fingers are working on the buttons of Steve’s shirt that Bucky actually stops to breathe. “This is okay, right? This is what you what you want?”

Steve licks his lips and huffs out a breath of air. “Only if you want it, too.”

Bucky laughs then. He’s in Steve’s lap, his hard dick pressing against Steve’s. “Yeah, I do.”

The truth, though, and what Bucky thinks he might actually be asking, is if this is more than just the two of them getting off together. He probably means that if Bucky wants him, not just for the night, but in the way that he thinks they were always intended to be: soulmates.

Bucky pretends that he isn’t asking this, though. Maybe it’s wrong, but he can’t focus on that right now.

Once all of the buttons on Steve’s shirt are undone, Bucky pushes it aside to run his hands down Steve’s chest. Skin on skin seems to make Bucky more fidgety, his arousal worsening as he touches Steve’s hard muscles. Steve must notice, too, because he lets out a choked noise, his hips bucking up to meet Bucky’s.

“Fuck,” Steve says, voice raw and deep. “Yes, please, Buck.”

The two of them move against each other. There are still too many layers between them, but Bucky thinks he could come just by this. As long Steve is still moaning in his ear and gripping onto his hips hard enough to leave bruises.

Steve stops then, eyes unfocused when he says, “Wait. I wanna taste you.”

The way he says it makes Bucky think that he’s thought about this before. Bucky brain almost breaks at the thought of Steve thinking about the two of them together, his hands on his cock as he imagines sucking Bucky off.

It hurts a little to separate himself from Steve again, only to move over so that he’s the one sitting on the bed, his hands anxiously squeezing at the blankets under him. Then, Steve gets on his knees, his body bracketed by Bucky’s legs, and starts to undo Bucky’s pants.

He’d be lying if he said that he’s never thought about it. He might’ve spent years refusing to imagine it was Steve (even if it was always Steve when he was dreaming and couldn’t control it), but he has imagined going to bed with another man. He was never proud of it, but he couldn’t deny just how riled up he’d get from the thoughts. He knew other men did this, and what else they got up to, but he had always thought that it would always be a fantasy.

Now, here Steve was, tugging down his pants and putting his mouth against the outline of Bucky’s hard cock through his briefs. Bucky is fucking unraveled by it. His hand shoots out to rest on Steve’s head, fingers lacing through the soft hair. Steve squeezes him through his briefs then, his breath hot through the material.

“Stop teasing,” Bucky says. “Please.”

Bucky can see his smirk, and it makes him smile a little too. It falls off his face, though, when Steve pushes down his briefs and puts his hand on Bucky’s cock. Experimentally, he runs his hand up and down Bucky’s length. Bucky hadn’t been sure before, but Steve’s nervousness seems to shine through then. He wets his lips again before leaning forward slowly. He only puts Bucky’s head in his mouth, but it’s enough for Bucky to pick up his hips a little and moan out Steve’s name.

This seems to embolden him, and he takes more of Bucky in his mouth, one of his hands resting on Bucky’s hip to keep him down. Steve seems to be trying things out, his mouth sucking before lapping a line from the top to the bottom of Bucky’s cock. Experienced or not, Steve’s enthusiasm makes up for anything he’s lacking.

It’s embarrassing when after only a few minutes Bucky is pulling at Steve’s hair and going, “Steve, I’m gonna – “

He means it as a warning, but Steve doesn’t move. He only moans and then works harder, making Bucky lose it. He’s watching Steve when he comes, and can’t help the way he repeats his name over and over. Even in the middle of his orgasm, he can’t help but to think about how it’s _Steve_ on his knees in front of him. It’s Steve who swallows him all, lips glossy and red when he pulls his mouth from Bucky’s cock.

It’s Steve, and it always has been.

When Bucky finally recovers, he realizes he still has his hands in Steve’s hair. He feels bad when he realizes how hard his grip was. It only seems fair to help Steve up from the ground after he’s tucked himself back into his pants so the two of them are standing again, Steve’s lips finding Bucky’s. He can taste himself in Steve’s mouth, but he doesn’t mind. If anything, it makes him wish that his cock wasn’t soft.

Bucky lets his hand glide down Steve’s chest again, stopping once it reaches the tent in his pant, his cock straining against the material. Although it doesn’t necessarily surprise him, Bucky likes the fact that Steve was turned on while sucking him off. Bucky likes it even more that he gets to help him feel good, just like he made Bucky feel.

He rubs him through the material of his khakis a few times just to hear Steve moan. When he unbuttons Steve’s pants and slips his hand into his briefs, Steve hides his face into Bucky’s neck. His stuttered breathing on Bucky’s neck only eggs Bucky to quicken his pace. For a second, Bucky wants to undo his pants just so he can take a look at his cock. Without even seeing it, Bucky can feel how big and thick he is. He thinks that maybe if he took it out, he’d have a hard time telling himself not to get on his own knees.

Steve is quiet when he comes, and all Bucky hears is a muffled, “ _Fuck_ , Bucky.”

They stay as they are, crowded together and breathing in each other’s space. Bucky wants desperately to lie down with him. He wants to talk until all the truth spills out, and all that’s left are blank canvases ready to be filled with a brighter future. He knows it won’t ever be true, though, and the longer he stays, the worse things may get down the line.

When Bucky pushes his shirt back up on his shoulders and abruptly leaves with only a few muttered apologies, he tells himself that he’s doing it to protect Steve.

Later on, once he’s back in his own room, he wonders what it would feel like to run his hand over the heart line on Steve’s palm, if maybe he could change what he saw.

***

Bucky wishes that Steve would be cold to him, if only for a little while. Even after Bucky walked out on him, Steve forgives. He still smiles at Bucky, albeit strained, and still lets him go back out on another mission with the Commandos. He doesn’t say anything about their night together, but the thrumming from before is still there. It feels likes the closer he gets to Steve, the worse their separation is.

It’s only after a particularly long day that Bucky can’t help but to fold, too weak and tired to push back. 

Steve is on watch, and everyone is sleeping, but Bucky picks too hard and finds fresh blood under the dried blood. It’s easier to finally haul himself up and do what he’s been meaning to do.

Steve is sitting a few feet away, a hard look on his face as he peers out into the early morning dusk. He has a gun in his lap and the shield at his feet. When he sees Bucky, Steve looks over and smiles, blood still oozing from his nose and the cut on his lip. Bucky sits beside him, closer than he means to be. It’s too close, though, and Bucky already feels the their magnetic tug. He’s so fucking sick of using all his leftover energy to pull in the opposite direction, so he surprises the two of them by putting his head on Steve’s shoulder. He lets out a shaky sigh, already feeling better. Then, Steve puts his head atop Bucky’s like they’ve done it a million times.

The two of them are leaning on each other like the actually need the other’s support. Maybe Bucky does, though, but he won’t admit it.

“Tell me again, please,” Bucky demands abruptly. “Can you tell me what you saw when we shook hands?”

Bucky can practically hear the frown. “I can tell it to you,” he explains. “But one day we’ll live it, you know. They always come true.”

That’s what Bucky’s been scared of for years.

“Not always,” Bucky says.

“Those are urban legends, Buck. It always comes true, or else you wouldn’t see it.”

Bucky’s started to feel like an urban legend himself lately. Maybe it could be a good thing. “Just tell me about it, asshole,” Bucky asks. Oddly, he feels like he might cry so he buries his face into Steve’s shoulder, and into the rough material of his jacket. He knows he shouldn’t be doing this. He doesn’t stop himself. It still feels so good to touch Steve, the warmness in his chest cresting just at their few points of contact.

“It was a nice summer night, like the worst of the heat was over. We were on a rooftop in New York City except…” Steve pauses, his voice deeper than before as he remembers. “It wasn’t right but it still felt like New York, you know? And we were sitting next to each other, like now, but we were holding hands. We kissed too, and you tasted like wine. I think we had been drinking. Our friends were there, too. I didn’t recognize any of them.”

Bucky didn’t have many friends back in Brooklyn that he spent much time with outside of work. Steve, though, seemed to always have a story about one of his friends he knew from art school. It seems strange that none of them are included in their future.

“It’s funny, though,” Steve says then. “When I met Howard, I spent a few days thinking he looked so familiar until I realized how much he looked like one of the people on the rooftop. I know it wasn’t him, but I keep forgetting to ask him if he has a brother.”

Steve clears his throat. “But, um, it wasn’t very long. Maybe less than a minute. I don’t think the length really matters. It was the feeling I got with it, Buck. Like, I was so happy. I can’t remember ever feeling that happy and content. It seems more important than what we were doing.”

Somehow, Bucky understands this. He’s been haunted for years by the memory, but above all, he’s been haunted by the feelings. He was full of anger and confusion and something that Bucky doesn’t even understand yet, which only scares him even more.

Bucky can’t see him, but Steve sniffles. When Bucky moves his face from Steve’s shoulder, he finds him crying, his adam’s apple bobbing as he wipes the tears away with the back of his hand. He smears the blood on his face and Bucky wants to wipe it all away but he stays as he is.

“I used to be really angry and worried about what you saw, Bucky, and I still kind of am, but mostly I’m just sad now.” Steve looks like he’s about to reach out and touch Bucky, but he stops himself. “I’m sad you didn’t get to see what I saw.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky gets out. He really is. Has been for years. There are so many things he’s sorry for, though. He’s sorry for the things that he’s done and for the things he will do.

Steve smiles sadly at him. “You’ll see it one day, I promise.”

Bucky’s not so sure.


	3. Chapter 3

For knowing the future, he still doesn’t see it coming.

Steve’s hand reaches out, and Bucky would’ve finally given in if he would’ve been able to. He isn’t, though, and instead he falls and falls and –

***

The soldier has no soulmate.

He shouldn’t know the man on the bridge. He shouldn’t recognize those eyes. He does, and he knows there’s something deeply wrong about that. His body always tells him what to do. He knows when to raise the gun, or when to strike with a knife in his hand, or when to duck and hide. He always knows because his body knows. The soldier might not know much, but his body knows enough to make up for it.

When he sees the man on the bridge, his body tells him to run and never look back. His body tells him that this man is a threat. His body tells him he’s a mission, but he’s much more than that.

The soldier strikes.

The soldier runs.

The soldier remembers.

***

The soldier forgets.

The soldier only remembers again when he’s teeth bared and fists red.

The man blinks slowly and repeats himself. He keeps saying the same thing and he won’t raise his fists. He lies beneath the soldier and lets him punch and punch and punch until his face is red and shiny with bruises. He refuses to fight back and something about it makes the soldier even angrier.

“I’m not going to fight you.”

It’s incessant. Why is this important? Was the soldier taught what to do in this scenario? Did someone say this very thing to him before?

When the soldier hits the surface of the water, a few blissful seconds encased in silence, he thinks, _have I been here before?_

***

Much later on, Steve asks, “Did you know?”

Bucky is on the other end of the couch from Steve. He’s not watching the movie that’s on, either, and instead scrolling mindlessly through his phone. Steve likes to put on movies at night, though. Ever since Bucky came back, he’s been adamant on the two of them watching movies together. Bucky doesn’t understand it, but he spends every Friday night in Steve’s apartment trying to focus on whichever movie is on that night. He rarely succeeds.

He knows that the way that Bucky barely talks to Steve kills him. He knows that Steve only suggests they watch movies in hopes it will somehow make Bucky feels like he can talk to Steve.

Bucky looks up, though, bleary eyed, and frowns at Steve.

“What?”

Steve takes a big breath and says, “Did you know you were going to fall off the train?”

Bucky stares.

“Is that what you saw?” A few seconds pass. “I couldn’t save you, and so you thought – ”

“ _Jesus_ , Steve.”

Bucky doesn’t feel nearly as functioning as he should be for this conversation. Steve’s mostly kept things light between them. When he had returned, sheepishly showing up in Steve’s apartment in DC and scaring the shit out of him when Steve came home from a run one day, the two of them have slowly been melting the ice between them little by little.

There’s seventy years of ice, though, and it takes a while.

“I’m sorry. After it happened I thought maybe I understood. That you hadn’t wanted me because you knew I wasn’t going to be able to save you.”

“You don’t have to be _sorry_ , Steve,” Bucky hisses. “That wasn’t your fault and it’s just – that’s not why. That wasn’t what I saw.”

“It hasn’t happened yet?” he asks quietly, eyes wide. Bucky sees it for what it is: fear. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, just…a _warning_ , Buck. A warning would be nice.”

 _A warning_. The words set heavy on Bucky. That’s what Bucky needs when he enters Steve’s life.

He swallows thickly and stands, already halfway to the door when he says, “It already happened so don’t worry too much about it.”

“Bucky, wait – ”

He doesn’t, and instead storms out of the living room to his own bedroom. He closes the door but doesn’t lock it.

When he was fresh in recovery, Steve trying to hand-hold every goddamn time Bucky lost it, sometimes the only relief was that the worst of it was over, and that one day, he and Steve would be on a rooftop on the fourth July. They’d be _happy_.

At the time, happy had seemed like a sticky word in Bucky’s mind and was more akin to a fairy tales or an urban legend.

Now, he’s not so sure that the moment even exists anymore, that maybe he ripped it away, and that they’ll never see those fireworks. Now, he’s not so sure it ever did exist. He wonders more than ever just how defective he is.

***

The thing is, Bucky knows happy.

He knows it small doses.

He knows happy when one of his flowers on the windowsill will blossom, or when he goes for a morning run and catches a glimpse of the sun rising over the Brooklyn Bridge, or when he takes the subway down to Brighton beach or the boardwalk at Coney Island.

He knows happy when he catches Steve humming under his breath as he sketches the way that the curtains catch in the evening breeze. He knows it when he tries a new recipe and Steve eats the entire plate. He knows it when Steve gets back from a mission, tired and bruised but still willing to check up on Bucky.

Since he shook Steve’s hand, he has never been sure that he’d find happiness. If he’s being honest with himself, though, he knows happiness. He knows it now, and he remember it in pieces from before. He can play pretend with Steve for as long as he wants, but he does remember what they had during the war. He remembers the press of Steve’s lips against his own, and he knows that Steve is desperate to know if Bucky remembers it.

If anything, Bucky thinks he remembers too much. He thinks that maybe it’s remnants of his past that keep him so withholding from Steve. He keeps his feelings so safely tucked away just as he had done before, when he was still haunted by the images of their shake.

The day after he snapped at Steve, he spends most of the day in his bedroom. Steve doesn’t bother him. He only knocks on the door once the sun has gone down to tell him that he’s made some dinner. Bucky sighs into his pillow and then forces himself to stand.

He follows the scent of cooked chicken to the kitchen and finds Steve by the stove. He has two plates of food in front of him.

“Hey,” he says when he sees Bucky standing in the doorway. “It’s, uh, nothing special. Some chicken with squash and asparagus.”

Bucky takes his offered plate and says, “Thank you.”

They sit at the table, but they don’t eat. Steve touches his fork, eyebrows scrunched together. “I’m sorry,” Steve says then. “I didn’t mean to make you angry yesterday. I get scared sometimes, though, that I’ll lose you again.”

Instantly, Bucky wants to retort, _I’m not yours to lose_. He knows that it’s not necessarily true. It’s impossible to deny their magnetism. It’s still there, whatever it was that kept them together through all these years. A few days ago even, Steve had accidentally knocked his shoulder against Bucky’s as they passed each other, and Bucky had felt the touch for the next hour. 

Worse, he refuses to delve too deep into the aching feeling that carves his chest when Steve is gone too long on a mission.

“You know I thought that I was going to kill you, right?” Bucky asks. He laughs then, rubbing the side of his face. “When we shook hands, you saw the two of us in love, and I saw myself nearly killing you. You’ve always wanted to know what I saw. It was us on the helicarriers.”

Steve stares at him. He doesn’t say anything, but Bucky wishes he would.

“I obviously didn’t understand it at the time. I mean, it was before you were big, and before I had – “ Bucky holds up his metal arm. “I didn’t even fucking know you. All I knew was that I was killing you.”

He’s still staring at Bucky with the same eyes he gave Bucky for weeks after he read the files on him that Natasha retrieved from a infiltrated Hydra base. Bucky hates it.

“I wish you would’ve told me,” Steve finally says to him.

Bucky laughs again, this time more desperate. “How could I have told you that, Steve?”

“I don’t know,” he says softly. There is no fight to his voice, not like Bucky would have suspected. He’s run the scenario in his head before, during the war, but he never expected for the admission to taste like this. “I’m still sorry that you didn’t get to see what I saw.”

Bucky swallows thickly. “I wish I could’ve, too.”

Bucky knows it’s on the tip of Steve’s tongue. _You’ll see it one day_. Bucky still remembers their conversation so many years ago. He thinks to it sometimes, the way that he had felt with his head on Steve’s shoulder, or the tears and blood on Steve’s face in the morning light. 

“I need you to know something,” Bucky says, chest tight. “I need you to know that I never wanted to run away from you, not on that first day we met or any day after that.”

“Bucky,” Steve starts. He looks like he might cry.

Abruptly, Bucky stands from the table. “I’m going to eat this in my room. Thanks.”

***

Bucky tries to spend the next couple days like their conversation never happened. Steve is a good sport, always has been, and tries to play along. Bucky still catches Steve staring at him with a distant look in his eyes. He tries to broach the subject too many times, but Bucky always cuts him off.

He feels like a bad person for doing it, but it’s not the first time he’s felt that way about himself.

A part of him is relieved when Steve leaves abruptly on a mission. Before he leaves, he stands in Bucky’s doorway with a worried expression on his face and says, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

There’s an unspoken _I’ll miss you_.

Bucky spends the next week trying to busy himself to stay away from checking the news. When Steve does come back, it’s late at night. Bucky is still up, a hundred pages into a novel that he had owned before the war that a museum had given them back. When he hears the noises of the lock being undone, he sits up in bed and listens for Steve.

When he doesn’t hear the telltale knock on his door, Bucky slowly stands up and calmly leaves his room. Steve is standing in the living room, cast in the light from the windows as he tries to take off his suit. He has a blood on his face and dirt in his hair. He doesn’t turn on the light.

“Are you okay?” Bucky asks.

This makes Steve jump and turn to face Bucky. “You scared me.” Then, when Bucky says nothing, “Can you unzip this?”

Bucky walks over him and reaches for the hidden zipper at the base of his neck. Steve takes it from there, peeling the suit from his body and leaving it a heap on the floor. Steve looks over to Bucky then.

“I missed you,” Bucky admits. It’s such a simple admission, he supposes, but the weight is more than he can bear. He’s missed Steve for so long. He wishes he could’ve spent their entire lives together, that they could’ve spent days picking fights in back alleys as kids or riding the roller-coaster at Coney Island. He wishes he wouldn’t have wasted so much time with Steve. He wishes he could’ve had more.

“I missed you, too,” Steve says. “You know that.”

Bucky doesn’t think when he asks, “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” Steve replies, like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

Gingerly, he places a hand where Steve’s shoulder meets his neck and leans in. His lips don’t taste the same as he remembers, but the feeling is still carved into his memory. He doesn’t get to savor it, though, because Steve is the one to pull away. His face is red and his eyes are dark, but he says, “I wish you’d talk to me more.”

Then, he walks away. The few steps makes something ache deep inside Bucky. Right when he thinks that Steve is going to close the door on him, just the same way that Bucky has been doing for months (or maybe for as long as Bucky has known him), he turns around and asks, “Are you coming?”

When Bucky follows after Steve, to lie in his bed and sleep by side through the night, he remembers then, what it feels like to give in.

Later on, Bucky realizes that it’s when they’re kissing that the truth seems the most obvious. The two of them are connected. Always have been, always will be. 

***

Bucky does exactly what Steve had asked of him.

They spend the next morning in bed, and Bucky talks and talks and talks until his throat feels raw. Steve listens intently. They always manage to have a point of contact through it all. Either their toes touching from under the covers, or Steve’s fingers resting on Bucky’s arm, or Bucky’s lips against Steve’s.

It’s easy from there to fall into the touches. Steve presses against him in their bed, mouth against his neck before he asks, “Will you fuck me?”

And Bucky does. He uses his fingers to make Steve gasp out his name over and over until he’s begging for Bucky to be inside him. They don’t last long, the feelings too intense. When Steve comes in hot spurts on their chests, Bucky loses it.

“Sorry,” Bucky finds himself apologizing after. “That was quicker than I thought it would be.”

Steve laughs into his shoulder. “I think we have time to make up for it.”

“We do now.”

The mood turns slightly somber, the past sometimes too heavy to look back on.

“I never wanted to run away from you,” Bucky tells him then. “All I wanted to do was protect you. I thought that’s what I was doing.”

Steve presses a kiss to his neck. “I love you.”

Bucky rolls over slightly, to face Steve and his admission. It’s been in the air for years, and Bucky wonders then how Steve ever had the resolve to never say it until today.

“I love you, too. I’m sorry I’ve never been good at showing it.”

“You still have time.”

***

When he makes the plans with Tony, Bucky thinks _maybe_.

He invites Steve’s friends (that are admittedly his friends too by now), and he buys wine, and spends most of the afternoon in the kitchen making food for them. When the sun starts to set, he takes Steve up to the roof of Tony’s building. When Bucky first sees the scene, he knows right away what night it is.

Steve smiles when he sees everyone, and he squeezes Bucky’s hand. When they turn to each other, he knows his suspicions were right all along.

They eat the meal Bucky’s made, and they cut into Steve’s cake, and they sing him Happy Birthday as fireworks go off in the distance.

Bucky looks up and watches the colors explode in the sky and feels the boom in his chest. He looks over to Steve to see him already smiling at Bucky.

“I told you,” he says.

It’s then that they lean in and kiss. Steve tastes like wine, and his touch still makes Bucky’s heart race. It’s quick, nothing too special, but something about it being what kept Steve holding on after all this time makes it seem like more than it is.

The world keeps moving after they separate. Minutes tick by in a world that Bucky never would have thought could exist.

Bucky doesn’t think that they deserved everything they’ve been through, but he does think that maybe all of it was worth it if only for the time they have now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!
> 
> feel free to follow me on tumblr at [ agetwellcard](https://agetwellcard.tumblr.com).


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